All electronic devices, including mobiles, tablets and computers, use a kind of plastics to build them, whether in making their integrated circuits, to insulate wires or for making enclosures and covers. With “No Plastics” after oil, all these commodities will be affected in a big way.
It is only few decades from now, can the world survive without them?
After oil, plastics can be produced from biopolymers, but in a very limited way, hence this scarce commodity should be used carefully and rationally. One of its usages may be in making semiconductors beside other material, such as silicone and germanium. Mobiles and Computer enclosures, which are today a main consumer of plastics, should use alternative material, such as treated wood, aluminum, glass etc. Insulated wires should be replaced by imprinted data buses using copper.
What about the software used on these?
This is another important area of improvement.
Today most of us replace their devices every 2-4 years, so on average, the devices turnover period is about 3 years, which means more devices consumed, translating into more plastics used. The new devices are always more powerful, so can run more powerful software, run new applications and store more data.
That is going to be a luxury after oil.
For the world to coupe with the “No Plastics” situation after oil, we need to change, not only the way we make these devices but also the way we build software for them. The new software should be able to run on the same devices for at least ten years before turnover of the hardware (instead of 3 years now). This means that the software should be made “Fit for Purpose”, be efficient and includes only the needed modules per user, with minimal options, so can run efficiently on aged hardware.